Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Also, the year "Titanic" won Best Picture, "Boogie Nights" wasn't even nominated

I learned yesterday that local alternative newsweekly/predatory ad pricerSF Weekly has something called the "SF Weekly Web Awards." I learned this because everyone in my Twitter feed perked up around the same time yesterday with "OMG I'M NOMINATED FOR AN SF WEEKLY WEB AWARD VOTE FOR ME LOL KTHXBAI"

I was not nominated for an SF Weekly Web Award. Oh great! It's like being picked next to last for kickball in 5th grade all over again.

Let's take a look and see what these awards are all about.

They're broken down into general areas like "News," "Music," "Food," "Art," and the like. Fair enough. Certainly seems reasonable to vote for "Best Local Politics Blogger" or "Best Food Vendor Twitter." I have some issues with "Best Yelper," in that it implies that there can be a "best" in Yelping, but we'll leave that convo for another day and also I don't want to get dragged in to the whole Yelp thing.

(BRIEF DIGRESSION: Before I moved to SF, I had been a music writer for the local alt-weekly in the mid-level City From Whence I Came. So when I got here, I packaged up my clips [there were actual "clips" back then, in the sense that they were on newsprint and clipped with a scissor from the pages of an alt-weekly] and sent them in to SF Weekly with a cover letter offering my not-inconsiderable skills as a music writer. I never heard back. IT STILL BURNS, SF WEEKLY. STILL BURNS.)

(ANOTHER BRIEF DIGRESSION: I can't hold a grudge, though, because SF Weekly published, for years, in the mid-90's, a comic strip by then-unknown [or maybe slightly-known] Dave Eggers and some other guy [Leon? I can't remember] called "Smarter Feller" that was hilarious and is also now impossible to find online. SF Weekly, if you're reading this, do you have all the Smarter Fellers cached somewhere secret that I can access? Do tell.)

So blah blah blah we get past "Best Fashion Blogger" and "Best Local Music Website" that you'd expect in any online voting thing like whatever YAWN seen it a million times, vote for "Bay Bridged" and move on, and then we get to "Only in SF," and this is where I'm thinking SCORE, I GOTTA BE HERE.

I'm not here.

Again, there are the usual boring "Best Local Government Site" (like, really, who gives a shit, no joke) and "Best Neighborhood Blog" (which is fair enough, that's reasonable, although you didn't nominate Civic Center and that kinda sucks) and then this:

"Best Tumblog"? WTF, SF Weekly? Does anyone ever use the term "Tumblog"? I think people just say "Tumblr." Anyway, you know that Tumblr is a blogging platform and not a genre, right? It's like having a Pulitzer Prize category for "Best Word 97 Document." Why isn't there a category for "Best WordPress" or "Best Blogspot"?

(That being said, there are two on that list - Kate's and Jane's - that I read regularly and like a lot. IT AIN'T PERSONAL, GIRLS. THIS DON'T INVOLVE YOU. JUST KEEP ON WALKIN.)

Anyway. Here are some categories you missed, SF Weekly, and my suggested nominee in each:

(Seriously, though, if you have a local web awards and you haven't nominated Burrito Justice for something, you have gone wrong. It's like having Celebrity Rehab without Steven Adler. It's just not done.)

OK, so, I am one of those bloggers who got all excited yesterday after being nominated.

But I'm nominated for "Sexiest Geek." WTF? Geek, yes. Sexy, not so much. I'm up against the co-founder of Twitter and Violet Blue, and a bunch of tech bloggers. Huh? I write about being knocked up and making Star Wars jokes. I think I'm the only personal blog on that list, and I'm not sure who nominated me.

I didn't even know about the nominations until Jeff from Muni Diaries alerted me. But now I will shameless pester my friends into voting for me, because I can totally beat the cofounder of Twitter.

And, by the way, I nominated you for the CBS' Most Valuable Blogger Award in the Health and Fitness category. I was surprised when you didn't get the nod.

AND, I think any local blog awards that doesn't not include you, Burrito Justice and the Uptown Almanac is suspicious.

[Ha, whoops, wanted to delete and fix up a typo. Now it looks weird. Oh well.]

Howdy! I'm the web editor over at SF Weekly, and the guy tasked with throwing this whole thing together.

First off, I read both you and Burrito Justice. And I like both of y'all. Like, a lot. It's probably creepy.

Second, the way we did this, which is carrying over from how it was done here last year and done in other cities in the Village Voice Media chain, was that we asked readers for nominations over the past two weeks, and then put those reader nominations up for a second round of voting.

No diss of either of you guys was intended. Next year, if I'm still running the whole shebang, we may switch it up and do a mixture of reader nominations and editorial picks. There's a lot of stuff that, with hindsight, I'd probably do differently! Trust me. For instance: I probably would not handcode the HTML links for all 300+ of nominees next time.

I broke them up into broad verticals, and tried to do the best I could coming up with categories. Some of them are maybe better than others. Just as a fun mental exercise, try to come up with 36 categories to nominate local online stuff for sometimes. Again, things I would maybe do differently.

But, truly -- one of the things I was looking forward to about doing this thing was the chance to say hello to a lot of local folks that I've been fans of for years and years, long before I ever sent a resume to SF Weekly. I realize some of this is funning around, but I also don't want some plaques to bruise any feelings. So, uh, friends? If nothing else, really hope both of y'all will come to our silly party and drink our booze and say hello. Email me at jake dot swearingen at sfweekly dot com.

About Me

TK lives and works in San Francisco. He occasionally travels to places east of the Caldecott Tunnel, but not very often. His interests include bars, reality TV, and irony. Things seem to be going fine.